No one paid much attention to National Car Free Day — except for higher than usual numbers of Orthodox Jews who marched resolutely through the streets of certain Orthodox suburbs of Johannesburg, the men with wide brimmed black Mafia hats clamped to their heads and bits of string dangling from their waists, the women in uncomfortable-looking crimplene and stiff shoes, the children whining and complaining to no avail.
I suspect that our Orthodox brethren were marching like this in the middle of the week less out of respect and admiration for the principles of Car Free Day than for the fact that it was Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement. Besides, they were a week early. If only someone had taken the trouble to coordinate the two events with more care, we might have had something to pat ourselves on the back about.
As it was, the bulk of us simply ignored Car Free Day (and the implied threat of arrest by the Metro Gestapo if we were caught driving with fewer than four passengers in the car) and drove about our business as we have always done — one person, one car, one pollution problem.
There are two possible solutions to the problem. The first is that the whole country could be forcibly converted to Orthodox Judaism — since, Yom Kippur or no, they spend at least one day a week flamboyantly turning their backs on the evils of the internal combustion engine. The whole country footing it for one day a week would be better than trying to figure out the public transport system for one day a year, as we were expected to do last week.
The second solution would be to actually establish a public transport system. Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe seems to have failed to do his homework before going out to some Tshwane township before dawn to prove to the general public that it could be done. He arrived at the bus stop, only to find that there were no buses expected that day. The ordinary people, as he should have remembered from his youth in KwaMashu, have always had to duck and dive and find alternative ways of getting to work — assuming they have work to get to. Public transport? Forget it.
Which brings us to the other alarming issue surrounding the pious platitudes sent from on high by the government about how we should respect Car Free Day. ‘Use taxis,” they said — implying that this was in fact a form of ‘public” transport.
These so-called ‘taxis” are neither ‘public” nor, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘transport”. I remember very well, as Jeff Radebe should, that this so-called ‘taxi” system came into being precisely because the apartheid government had gone out of its way not to be bothered with an effective public transport system. The Putco buses and smelly trains that were supposed to make it possible for people to get from their out-of-sight-out-of-mind townships to the industrial zones closer to town were few and far between. If you relied on them, you were likely to get fired for failing to show up at clock-in time.
Township people who happened to have cars started to give friendly ‘rides” to their less fortunate neighbours, in exchange for a small consideration for the petrol tank. This soon became an indispensable arrangement, eventually leading to a burgeoning illegal transport industry which was finally, without much thought to the consequences of lack of regulation, legalised in the 1980s.
The taxis might now be legal, but most of the principles on which they are operated remain strictly illegal. Fleet owners are generally warlords protecting their turf, backed up by small personal armies equipped with top of the range weapons arsenals. The vehicles are no longer owner-driven, but operated by anti-social characters whose only interest is to squeeze a tiny bit of profit out of an almost impossible situation. Safety, courtesy and service delivery are hardly bottom-line considerations. In the blatant absence of any alternatives, the hostage passengers keep their mouths shut, hand over their fares and take their chances.
So, it is hard to see how government argues that this can in any way be construed as ‘public transport”. It is public in the sense that the majority of the public is obliged to fall back on it simply to get around. But it is not public transport in the sense of the British double-decker bus or underground train, the New York subway, or the Amsterdam tram. Levels of hygiene and efficiency in the transport systems might vary between these cities, but they generally get you where you need to be, on routes that are not based on structures of race and class. In brief, they are enlightened public services.
What did not emerge during Car Free Day was when Johannesburg and South Africa’s other cities might reasonably expect to get decent public transport systems, or indeed whether this is even being thought about at all. We have been hearing for years about the so-called Shilowa Express, but this seems to be a luxury aimed at a small, international commuting market.
They tore up the tramlines in downtown Johannesburg about half a century ago, removing a quaint, sociable infrastructure in favour of the rampaging, noisy, polluting motorcar that was to become the sign of the Johannesburger’s individual personality from then on. Maybe it is time to think about taking the time and effort to lay those tramlines down again, and bump those aggressive minibus taxis off the road for good. At least trams are clean, efficient, quiet — and picturesque. Tourists and schoolchildren would love them.